House speaker John Boehner said: 'We are resolved to have this law go away, and we're going to do everything we can to stop it.' Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Republicans pushed through yet another bill to abolish Barack Obama's healthcare reforms on Wednesday after two days of vigorous debate culminated in a decisive but nonetheless futile vote to scrap the legislation.

The House of Representatives has now voted more than 30 times to abolish or undermine the healthcare law, with this week's debate arranged as a counterpoint to the supreme court ruling upholding the reforms.

The vote was 244 in favour of abolition with 185 against, but the legislation is likely to be killed in the Senate, as was a similar bill in February.

Five Democrats joined the Republican majority in support of abolition of what its opponents deride as Obamacare, reflecting the continuing divisions within the president's party over the reforms even after the supreme court upheld them.

Some conservative Democrats facing tough re-election battles continue to distance themselves from the healthcare law, which remains unpopular with large numbers of people, particularly the requirement to buy insurance.

Two of the Democrats who voted in favour of repeal, Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma, are retiring. The other three, Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Jim Matheson of Utah, are fighting in competitive districts. All five voted against passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

The debate was largely a reprise of the arguments over healthcare heard for the last three years. The Republicans, with an eye on November's presidential election, do not expect to be able to kill off the reforms any time soon, but they were keen to again air accusations that the legislation is an attack on individual liberty as well as increasing the cost of medical insurance.

"We are resolved to have this law go away, and we're going to do everything we can to stop it," said John Boehner, the Republican House speaker.

Republicans also seized on the supreme court's conclusion that the reforms are legal under Congress's taxing powers and are therefore yet another tax burden.

The Republican leader in the House, Eric Cantor, said that the continuing unpopularity of the law, with about half of Americans opposed to it, means it should be scrapped.

"This is a law that the American people did not want when it was passed and it remains a law that the American people do not want now," said Cantor. "Obamacare takes away from patients the ability to make their own decisions and individual choices."

Democratic leaders responded by deriding Republicans for wasting time once again by voting on an issue they regard as settled with the supreme court ruling and for failing to put forward alternative proposals.

A Democratic party member, Anna Eshoo, quoted Shakespeare in chiding Republicans for not accepting they lost the battle over health care reforms when the supreme court offered its verdict.

"Thou dost protest too much," she said. "The chief justice and four other justices of the supreme court of our land have upheld the law for health care accessibility for every single American - and what do the Republicans do but come to repeal?"

The Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, described the attempt to repeal health care as "useless bill to nowhere".